A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (30 page)

The English will believe nearly anything. How did such gullible people create an empire?

My last purchases were not at all ladylike: a weathered Gladstone bag and two shiny blades, one a needle-pointed, double edged narrow stiletto and the other a wider knife with one razor-sharp edge. They fit quite nicely into the bag.

At last I could leave the vile little room. I found the perfect place for my new home: a lodging house for young spinsters, with a small room at the rear with its own entrance opening out onto the garden, which was surrounded by a brick wall. I rented it in my guise as Angelique Fortaine, a descendant of French émigrés during the Terror. Poor Angelique had been a companion to the invalid wife of a wealthy man until the man – the cad! – forced himself upon her and then cast her out without references. Told with the appropriate quiver in the voice, it was most affecting. The other lodgers took Angelique to their collective bosom, loving her for her dainty ways and chin-up bravery.

Everything was in place. It was time to launch my official career.

I decided, first of all, to think of them as “projects” rather than victims. “Victim” denotes innocence. Since all men are guilty of something, innocence would not apply. I knew what kind of man I wanted to dispatch: big men, a physical combination of my father, Doyle, and the bullies who had tormented me.

London is such a wonderfully designed city in which to commit murder, that it took no time at all to find an excellent location for my first project.

It was a doss house which should have been torn down years before, and looked as if it were in imminent danger of collapsing. London is full of these abandoned places. Most of them, like this one, are not far from the river; immensely convenient for disposing of bodies. I packed the Gladstone with bread and cheese, the two blades, and a change of clothing in the event I became blood-spattered. And then I, as Angelique, took my place in the abandoned doss house and waited patiently. One of my virtues is patience, though I could not help but also be nervous and excited.

Hours passed; I was becoming a little discouraged. Functioning gaslights were sparse and what little illumination came from them consisted of fuzzy yellow balls that dissipated in the thickening fog. The occasional sounds – horse hooves clopping, cab wheels squeaking, sharp or muted voices, barking dogs, the squall of cats – had the hollow, eerie quality that fog lends.

Then he came. Easily as big as Doyle. A sailor, judging from his gait, which was one-part sea legs and two parts rum. He sang hoarsely, “‘Well it’s all for me grog, me jolly jolly grog, It’s all for me beer and tobacco –’”

I pulled the bodice down a little, though not far enough to give away the padding that rounded it out and then I – rather, Angelique – suddenly stepped out of the shadows, facing him with a smile. He halted, his eyes narrowing in the dim glow of one of the scarce gaslights. “Hey, up,” he said, his accent betraying a Yorkshire birth. “What’s tha want, lass?”

Angelique said, “Nothing. But I know what you want.” Angelique’s hand delivered a no-nonsense grope and a tent rose immediately in the man’s trousers. An unanticipated shock deep in my gut sent me out of character for the space of a second. I uttered a little involuntary gasp. and gripped him hard, as a wave of light-headedness passed over me. I had never even thought of – I ruthlessly put away the shadowy imaginings I dared not remember; Angelique took control again. It could not have lasted more than an instant, but it was a warning.

The sailor looked down at Angelique’s firm hand clutching his hard rod. He chortled. “Tha does knows what I want, lass!”

His coarse voice and the way he dug his dirty fingers so painfully into Angelique’s shoulder banished the last of her brief, unwelcome jolt of pleasure. There was business to be done. “Come along,” Angelique said. “I won’t do the deed in doorways.”

“I ain’t got but a shillin’ left,” he mumbled. “That’s all tha can get.” Angelique assured him it was more than enough. His fingers dug more painfully into her shoulder. “Just see that ye mind the teeth, lass. If tha don’t, tha won’t have any teeth left.”

Inside the doss-house, as he fumbled with his trouser buttons Angelique removed the stiletto from the bag. She had one more brief moment of panic when he grabbed her with one paw before she was ready, roughly hoisted her skirt and shoved his hand upward. He yelled in shock, “What the – ?” The last sound he made was a wheezing gurgle as the silver blade of the stiletto plunged into the front of his throat, through flesh, muscle and cartilage. There was little blood; the stiletto acted as a cork as he clawed at it, staggering. In the darkness I could not see the details, but I imagined his eyes popping open. He toppled like a tree beneath a woodsman’s axe. He lay on his back, his limbs working convulsively. Then he stopped. Just…stopped.

Angelique put one foot on his chest for leverage, pulled out the stiletto, and wiped it on his coat. Last, to make certain he was dead, she carved a grinning mouth beneath his chin. She had forgot to ask the great donkey his name, but then, it didn’t matter. A rose by any other name is still…a corpse.

My God, the exultation! Unless one has killed a man one can’t possibly conceive what it is like. The euphoria doesn’t last, of course. There is rather a…a letdown, a deflation of emotion minutes later.

The rest of the night in the lodging house, I wrote it all down. I didn’t want to forget a second of it. I realized I had to make some improvements. After all, no true craftsman is ever satisfied, and one learns as one gains experience.

To my disappointment, the body was not found for three days, and even when it was no one cared. After all, murder is an industry in the East End of London. My future excursions would have to be more daring, more dangerous, more open, if I wanted them to be noticed. There was nothing especially memorable about the two projects which followed, except that the bodies were discovered much sooner because they were left where they would be found, much like the whores killed by old Jack nearly fifteen years ago.

Sometimes I thought about Sir Arthur’s ruminations on spiritualism and felt uneasy. Would any of my projects return to point an accusing finger? Absurd. None of Jack’s fair ladies had returned to do him in.

When the fourth body was found, the whole huge city became gripped by a panic of my making! Exhilarating! The ladies in the lodging house talked of nothing else. The newspapers wrote of little else. In an effort to contain the panic, the police pointed out time and again that there was no known connection between the victims, except for the manner of their death and the fact that they had all had been men in their prime. No one believed them. Everybody knew they were searching for a man large enough and strong enough to overpower the victims and cut a grinning mouth beneath their chins.

Even women were frightened though the “New Ripper” had thus far targeted only men. Decent women seldom left the house and working class women went only in pairs or small groups. Men, fools that they are, apparently considered such precautions to be unmanly and continued to make easy targets of themselves.

Letters to the newspapers demanded that the police enlist the aid of Arthur Conan Doyle. It was common knowledge that letters poured in to the non-existent Baker Street address of “Mr Sherlock Holmes, Det.” More and more eyewitnesses came forward to describe a hairy creature seen in the vicinity of every one of the murders, a beast more ape than man. Utterly delightful! Dressed as Angelique I could have walked about in plain sight, carrying a severed head in one hand and a knife dripping blood in the other, and no one would have suspected me.

All these years, Michael Browne and David Neesom have never been far from my thoughts, though I lost track of both of them when the school was closed. I finally picked up David’s trail by reading a small story in an old newspaper. David had gone to South Africa in ’01 as a lieutenant, had saved the life of a colonel, during which action he had been wounded by some wretched Boer, and had been awarded the Victoria Cross. The article gave the place of his employment. My biggest fear was that he and Michael had ceased to be friends. I wanted, needed, them to be together in one way or another.

Angelique, delicately dabbing at tears, hired a private detective to find her runaway fiancée, Michael Browne. I learned that Michael, though opposed to the war, had served as a hospital volunteer under the direction of Dr Conan Doyle before falling very ill in Africa. After returning home they had remained in touch; his letters had been there, under my very nose. If only I had read the letters Doyle offered to share with me, I would have found him sooner and saved a good deal of money. One of the few mistakes I have ever made.

To Angelique’s delight, the detective reported (with a bit of a sneer on his pug face) that the bond between David and Michael had not been broken in the intervening years. Heroic David, whose handsome visage now bore a vivid scar, and the volunteer doctor, now studying to be a real doctor, were not so bold as to live together. But they frequently met at a music hall called the Fast Goose and from there often spent a night under assumed names at a declining hotel with the grand name of The Lord Byron. The detective made it plain that, since Angelique’s fiancé had turned out to be less than a man, he would be willing to take the sod’s place. With a brave smile, Angelique gently refused his solace.

All of this detecting was expensive and used up the last of the money I had saved working for Doyle. Now that I had the information I needed, I had to decide how best to use it. I made and discarded a dozen scenarios before deciding that simplicity was best. It all hinged on their being, as they had been at school, Good Predictable Englishmen who never change an established habit. I decided that this would be my last project, and the first one involving two men at once. I examined my plan for flaws and found none. Therefore, it was set in motion.

Angelique, dressed in the finest of her gowns, approached the manager of the Fast Goose one afternoon. “I desperately need work,” she said, with a tear in her voice. “My husband is a brute and will not provide even the necessities of life for me. I was a performer before I married.” Oh, such an accomplished liar, that little chit! “I would be willing to sing for your customers for no money if I might just live in the flat above.”

He almost drooled with avarice: a performer for nothing! He unsuccessfully pretended reluctance and Angelique followed him out into the performance area, where he whacked his ham-like hands around on the piano keys. Angelique sang in a husky tenor – or, as the fool considered it, an alluring alto – all that remained of my angelic boyish soprano. The words were innocent enough, but the subtle gestures contained unstated invitations which had been gleaned by careful observation of female performers of that type.

I moved into the upstairs flat that very afternoon, and that night Angelique first performed. The initial awkwardness in her performance came across the gas footlights as girlish innocence and, I was certain, charmed every penis in the room. I could almost hear them snapping to attention. As Angelique left the stage the manager handed her a note, an invitation. “From him,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of a bruiser with shoulders broad as a playing field and a squashed nose with a decided tilt to the left. “Ian Conner. The Champ.”

“Champ? Of what?”

The manager looked as if he could not believe such stupidity. “Boxing, of course! Takes on all comers. Always wins.”

Angelique smiled sweetly, wrote “No, thank you,” on the note and returned it to the boxer. The next night Conner invited her again and was refused. And again on the third night. He was becoming tiresome. Then, since Michael Browne and David Neesom would not have their customary rendezvous for two more nights, Angelique changed her mind. When Conner pleaded the fourth time, stating that his wife was holidaying in Europe, Angelique agreed to meet him at his home that evening.

The disapproving butler led me to the master suite at midnight, and there my paramour waited, wearing a deep blue velvet smoking jacket. Against one wall was an elaborate buffet, complete with flowers, holding his idea of a seductive repast, oysters and Pinot noir. Needless to say, he drank three glasses to my one, and after an hour or so abandoned the wine for Irish whiskey. The combination of wine, whiskey, and a few little drops from a small brown bottle in my pocket, put him across his bed, snoring mightily. Amusing. The Champ had been knocked out by a “girl.”

My, but he was difficult to strip. He was very large and heavy, and a dead weight. But I managed to get him undressed and under the covers before I put on a pretty nightgown, with one of his dressing gowns over it. Then, humming happily, I cut his throat, opened the window, and commenced to scream mightily.

The butler rushed in brandishing a gun, to find his employer naked in bed, his throat cut, while an ocean of blood flowed from him and dripped to the carpet while his whore, the dressing gown covered in blood, shrieked hysterically. The police arrived soon after. By then, the butler had calmed the poor dear with wine, and she was able to tell them of two men who had broken in, overpowered the mighty boxer and murdered him, holding her at gunpoint and making terrible threats. They would have murdered her too but on hearing the approach of the butler they had exited out the window. The brutes had been sensible enough to wear gloves and though the detectives dutifully took fingerprints it was highly unlikely there would be any other than Conner’s, Angelique’s, the butler’s, and other people who belonged in the house.

“One of them,” Angelique told the detectives, her voice shaking, “bragged that together they are the New Ripper.” In some mysterious way headlines in the newspapers the very next day declared,

CHAMP MURDERED BY NEW RIPPER

Eyewitness Describes the Perpetrators

of the Heinous, Bloody Crime

The account detailed the description given by the eyewitness, a comely female singer. The dastardly villains were large and almost ape-like in appearance, and looked amazingly like the public perception. A police artist provided a sketch of the suspects based on her description.